From Taylor Swift to the Rocky Mountains, amidst wind-whispered stories and cold-night sleeping bags, we’re shaping the lives of boys becoming men. As they’re held in meaningful relationships and supported to overcome real challenges, a generation of compassionate, resilient and courageous young men is taking shape.

It comes back to parents, the primary protection for growing boys and their closest model for what it means to be authentically connected to others. It lives within schools, where boys learn the script for manhood and navigate their resistance to it. And more than anywhere else, it unfolds in the inner lives of boys: in the unseen depth of their friendships and shared secrets, in the quiet breathing as they fall asleep, in their ability to say the words that are too often left unsaid.

As we work towards a culture of justice, love and communicative collaboration, Creating Consent Culture is a well-researched, detailed and facilitator-oriented set of ideas and workshop outlines to help us on the way.

Where are boys practicing the attitudes, language and behaviour that will define them as young men? Where are they figuring out whether or not to challenge the status quo? It’s not in an all-gender, safe-space health class where boys are outnumbered and unlikely to speak up anyway.